What’s Happening?

The CADVC is looking for two UMBC graduate students interested in an oral history research project this summer. The objective is to collect an extensive oral history of the founding, development, and progress of UMBC’s Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park (JBSP) and its three partnership parks in Baltimore City before Labor Day. 

These positions are open to emerging historians who are interested in gaining experience in interviewing subjects, transcription, and developing strategies for making historical knowledge accessible to community members and online visitors.

Responsibilities

• Conduct 8-10 in-depth oral history interviews with JBSP founders, UMBC staff, Nature Sacred staff, and others
  
• Employ advanced audio production skills by recording, editing, organizing, and producing audio files 
  
• Conduct transcription of all audio recordings
  
• Log documentation of tasks and hours worked

Requirements

• UMBC graduate students with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 
  
• Taken either HIST 736 (Introduction to Oral Histories), similar coursework at the undergraduate or graduate level, or have consent of a department head or CADVC as having competency in this area.
  
• Must have the ability to become appropriately certified with IRB through UMBC or provide proof of previous certification 
  
• Provide their own transportation to and from campus and have access to their own reliable and suitable audio equipment or the ability to check out equipment from UMBC’s library 

These two positions carry a stipend of $1,500 each. The stipend will be issued in two installments, one $750 installment at the time of hire or completion of IRB certification and one $750 installment upon project completion.

Covid-19 Precautions: 

• It is possible all work may be carried out remotely, but more likely it will require significant in-person recording time with individuals at locations as far as the offices of Nature Sacred in Annapolis and other locations to be determined. 
  
• UMBC may require daily health monitoring and/or regular testing just as if incumbents were coming to campus regularly. 
  
• It is understood that the on-going pandemic may necessitate continued and unexpected changes in requirements for UMBC research activities for many months to flexibility in responding to these changes will be necessary to the successful completion of the project.

To Apply:

Please send your C.V. or resume and a cover email to Sandra Abbott at abbotts@umbc.edu by May 10, 2021. Candidates will then be contacted for a WebEx interview. No phone calls, please.

CULTIVATE THIS.

Nature has much to teach us. Today, we're enjoying its lesson to notice what is around us. To reconnect with the big picture. This 12-minute meditation, created by the Center of Arts, Design and Visual Culture at UMBC, guides us through this lesson with breathing, awareness practices and nature imagery inspired by their Sacred Place, The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park. This is the first of three "Nature as Teacher" meditations — the latest addition to our Nature Sacred Guides.

You can check out the program here: https://naturesacred.org/programming_kit/nature-as-teacher-cultivating-peace-in-uncertain-times/ 

Each video meditation is kindly filmed by Research Associate Professor, Director of UMBC’sImaging Research Center and award-winning filmmaker Lee Boot and narrated by UMBC’s Director of Workplace Learning, OD & Wellness and Founder & CEO of Wardell Development Group LLC.,Jill Wardell. The project is supported by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture and the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership with a generous gift fromNature Sacred (naturesacred.org).

As advocates for the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park, part of our mission is to promote inspirational outdoor community environments,  where passersby pause to sit with nature or gather to be with friends. While we love it when the park is buzzing with community workshops or performances, we also know that there is much beauty to be found in the quiet, serene moments in this unique UMBC space.  

Stephen Bradley, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, Director of the Linehan Artist Scholar Program, and UMBC community member recently captured one of these moments on August 30 at the beginning of this semester when he was researching sonic environments right on campus at the Beuys Park. 

Listen to his 11-minute recording of this lively cicada chorus in the park here! 

About the artist

Stephen Bradley is an interdisciplinary artist, engaged in acoustic ecology and material culture.   He maps and traces our relationship to place through ecology, sound and sculptural objects, including recorded narratives juxtaposed with artifacts discarded or lost in the landscape.

 To learn more about Stephen Bradley’s work, visit his website and check out his sonic research and his land mapping research.

 Whether urban or rural, the sounds of our home environments give us - often unconsciously - a strong "sense of place".  

-Hildegard Westerkamp, The Local and Global “Language” of Environmental Sound